Total number of folios: 305. The figure was arrived from the Gotthelf-Bergsträßer-Filmarchiv. However, given the fact that the folio count starts from 1b (instead of 1a), it may be likely that some other folios are present.

History Of The Manuscript

The earliest photograph of this manuscript appeared in Bergsträsser and Pretzl's Die Geschichte Des Qorāntexts in 1936.[1] However, the history of study of this manuscript in the Western world goes back to Theodor Nöldeke, whose book Geschichte Des Qorān was considered as a landmark of philological scholarship of the Qur'an. Nöldeke's successors Gotthelf Bergsträsser and Otto Pretzl developed the project for creating a philological critical study of the Qur'an. Armed with the newly developed first transportable Leica photographic camera and Agfa film roll,[2] Bergsträsser travelled the Muslim world to take pictures of Arabic texts, including the Qur'anic manuscripts such as codex Topkapı Sarayı Medina 1a. He died, quite young, in the year 1933 and left behind an archive that was lost from sight after World War II by a combination of silence of his successor Anton Spitaler (d. 2003)[3] and rumours of the destruction of the material in the bombing of 1944.[4]

How big was the archive originally collected by Bergsträsser and Pretzl? Muhammad Hamidullah, who had met Pretzl when the latter came to Paris to collect photocopies of the Qur'anic manuscripts available in the libraries there, says that it had the photographs of "42,000 copies (or folios?) of the Qur'an" and that "they are collating them".[5] Hamidullah adds that Pretzl also issued a "provisional report" which said that occasional mistakes of the copyists were found in these manuscripts but "no textual differences" from the official text were seen.[6]

Script & Ornamentation

Ḥijāzī.

In terms of script style this is perhaps one of the most intriguing early manuscripts of the Qur'an published so far. There are at least four different hands and perhaps as many as six. With the exception of the final hand, the manuscript is penned in differing forms of ḥijāzī script all of which confess acquaintance with kufic tendencies from the Umayyad period, evidenced by the uniformity and regularity of their appearance and the overall presentation of the page. Sharing the same script style as Marcel 13 + Arabe 330c (same manuscript) and TIEM ŞE 321, it is the final hand (herein Hand F) of Medina 1a which has the most potential to shed light on the milieux in which this manuscript was produced. Fortunately, Marcel 13 has been precisely described in the literature,[7] marking it out from this very small group of special manuscripts. In terms of palaeography, François Déroche summarises the salient characteristics of the script heralded by Marcel 13, showing its close affinity with the manuscripts just mentioned as well as the milestones of ʿAbd al-Malik.[8] The final hand of Medina 1a fits neatly into this group of scripts[9] and is now an additional substantial piece of evidence contributing towards our knowledge and understanding of Umayyad bookhands (Figure 2). Based primarily on palaeographic and art historical criteria, Alain George and Barry Flood date Marcel 13 to the late 1st century hijra with George stating the script antedates Codex Ṣanʿāʾ 20-33.1, itself dated to the late 1st century hijra (c. 705-715 CE).[10] Déroche prefers a slightly wider range of dates that extends into the first decades of the second century of hijra / 8th century CE, still belonging to the Umayyad period.[11]

Given this was once a complete Qur'an consisting of around 400(?) folios, it is almost certain a wealthy patron commissioned its production, though it seems expansive illumination and ornamentation were not key concerns, or their inclusion was not deemed economical or cost effective. Unlike Marcel 13 and TIEM ŞE 321, there are no precisely executed elaborate ornamental bands between sūrahs that echo the decorative elements of the Dome of the Rock and other Umayyad structures. There are basic line art and simple geometric patterns based on circular, square and rectangular shapes, variously connected and inked in different colours, giving the appearance of chain / ribbon like structures. Sometimes there is no decoration, sometimes the text is headed by the name of the sūrah. There is no uniform system for indicating / decorating verse separators and some have clearly been erased. In general single verse separators are indicated by dashes / dots arranged as a vertical or slanting line or in triangular form. Similarly where ten verse separators are indicated, they appear as a large circle surrounded by dots. The scribes of this manuscript did not regularly leave a large enough space between sūrahs that would have allowed for such decoration to be added at a later date. How should this ‘discrepancy’ be interpreted and can it provide any clues towards the dating of this manuscript? It used to be thought that early manuscripts of the Qur'an without decoration preceded those similarly dated Qur'ans showing ornamental decoration. This hypothesis was frustrated by the discovery of Codex Ṣanʿāʾ I which showed the presence of geometric sūrah separators in the scriptio inferior, which, though altogether less elaborate, showed a form of decoration that did not exist in the scriptio superior. In light of this observation, it cannot be stated that this manuscript should antedate Marcel 13 and/or TIEM ŞE 321 based on this criterion alone. The presence however, of at least three or as many as five different other hands may provide more decisive evidence. Adolf Grohmann studied this manuscript though he was limited to one ḥijāzī style folio. Based on similarities with dated first century Arabic papyri, Grohmann ascribed Medina 1a to the 1st century of hijra.[12] Similarly, Michael Marx states that Medina 1a is from amongst the earliest manuscripts of the Qur'an written in the ḥijāzī script,[13] though considering the manuscript as a whole it seems more accurate to ascribe it to a later stage of development.

Contents

The contents of the manuscript are tabulated below. This constitutes ~78% of the total text of the Qur'an.

The present writer was collaborating with the late Professor Bergstrasser on such a project, and a beginning had been made on both the connected problems. The writer has gone through all the printed literature and a good deal of MSS material to collect all the variant readings. Bergstrasser established at Munich a Qur'anic Archive in which he commenced to gather the photographs of all early Qur'anic MSS, and of all masoretic material connected therewith. After his untimely death this Archive was continued and developed by his successor Otto Pretzl, but Pretzl was killed outside Sebastopol during this late War, and the whole of the Archive at Munich was destroyed by bomb action and by fire, so that the gigantic task has to be started over again from the beginning.

[6] ibid. An indirect confirmation of this "provisional report" comes from Arthur Jeffery who compared the ʿUthmanic text from the "uncanonical" readings of Ibn Masʿud and Ubayy ibn Kʿab :

Bergsträsser in his preliminary collection of the uncanonical readings of Ibn Masʿud and Ubai made an attempt to estimate the value of these two texts as compared with the ʿUthmanic text. With increase of material one feels less inclined to venture on such a judgement of value.

See A. Jeffery, Materials For The History Of The Text Of The Qur'an: The Old Codices, 1937, E. J. Brill: Leiden, p. 16.

[12] A. Grohmann, "The Problem Of Dating Early Qur'ans", Der Islam, 1958, Volume 33, Number 3, pp. 221-222. Speaking of the Gotthelf-Bergsträßer-Filmarchiv, Grohmann said, “The rich collection of photographs of old Qur'ans in the Bavarian Academy of Sciences in Munich would have been very useful ...” Fast forward fifty years later and scholars find themselves in a similar position!

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